The Home for Odd, Ugly and Neglected Toys

I was reluctantly in a McDonald’s restaurant the other morning ordering an Egg McMuffin for breakfast. (Don’t ask me why. It involves traveling to “in-the-middle-of-nowhere”, Georgia and being stuck with one or two options for food.) While waiting for my order, I casually strolled around the place when I noticed the familiar, plastic bubble filled with crappy Happy Meal toys based on some Hollywood blockbuster movie. The movie toys this time around were based on characters from “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithonsian.”

That’s when I saw this guy.

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A dinosaur skeleton? I had to have him, but I sure as hell didn’t want to order a Happy Meal. I asked the cashier if there were any dinosaur skeleton toys left and if I could just buy it outright. She rummaged through a large pin of shrink-wrapped plastic, and it turns out, there were only two characters left – the T-Rex and some Octopus thing. What luck! Better yet, she said the toy would only cost me $1.07. Wow! Not bad.

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If you’re familiar at all with the Museum movies, you’ll know that in the movie, after the museum closes, all of its exhibits come to life. Well, one of the exhibits is giant skeleton T-Rex that runs around like a super-hyper puppy fetching a bone for the museum’s security guard. So, this is a walking wind-up toy of Rexy, and I must say he looks pretty cool for a McDonald’s toy.

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I’m actually surprised that I’m featuring a McDonald’s toy on the blog, but there are a few good reasons I’m writing about him.

Oh yeah, one last thing – the Rexy toy comes with a trading card. It contains bio info and trivia about the character. It’s nothing special to look at.

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But the really, really, really, really lame thing is, in order for Rexy’s walking action to activate, you have to slip the card into his back to press a small trigger. What the hell kind of crap is that? Why not just let the toy walk on its own? If there needs to be a trigger, why not just let it be an on/off switch. If there needs to be some gimmick that wakes the dinosaur and allows it to move, why couldn’t it just be some cool extra piece like a bone or a little man to ride it or something? A playing card? Gimme a break.

I’m a big fan of tiki stuff from the 1950’s-60’s heyday. So when I saw they had an Easter Island statue available for the same movie promo, I had to get one to put on my desk at work. Unfortunately, it just talks when you put the card in the slot. When it does talk, it says, “You give me gum-gum”, but, well, let’s just say it doesn’t sound like “gum-gum” unless you realllllly listen. Thinking it could be construed as inappropriate for work, I decided it would be best to just throw it away.

Long story short, the skeleton T-Rex is a lot cooler, even if you do have to put a card in it’s back-end.

@Bradlby – Wow! I didn’t make the Battle Bones connection. Maybe the appeal of this thing is based on my subconscious childhood and my love for He-Man toys.

@ Joe – Oops. My mistake. It sucks ass that I need the tablet of Akmenrah to activate this toy 😉

@ The Pizza – I agree that the card activation works conceptually, but I’m not sure it makes for a fun toy. I actually eat at McD’s every 2 years probably. Maybe less. I guess my count starts over cuz of last weekend.

@ SpaceMonkeyX – I honestly didn’t even pay attention to what the other Happy Meal toys were. Ha! I just noticed the skeleton and reacted. Your crude tiki story sounds pretty funny 😀

Ha! I grabbed an even more lamely named “Mighty Kids Meal” from McDonald’s a week or so ago and got a different toy from this line. It’s a wind-up squirrel that hops in classic wind-up fashion and has a scaled soldier in full roman armor riding on it’s back. Thinking the card was utterly craptastic but the toy too weird to throw away, I cut a little piece of the card off and pushed it down into the slot. Works like clockwork, no pun intended. I liked the little bugger so much, I returned a few days later and lucked out with ol’ Rexy. Good thing I eat crap.

I remember when I was a kid, McDonalds or Burger King, not sure which one, had dinosaur skeleton toys but they didn’t wind up or anything.
You had to put the pieces together and I remember the bones were like an orange rust color but they were kinda neat.
I had the T-Rex and the Sabretooth.
I don’t remember exactly but I think there was also a Triceratops and a Pterodactyl.

Kindred Spirits

Who is Weirdo Toys?

I’m Justin Gammon. I'm a designer/illustrator by day and toy-blogger by night. That'll explain my sporadic postings. What do you mean you want to write to me? That's odd. Hey, while you're at it, would you send me some cool toys? Thanks!